I'm back!

I’m back!  And it’s been a long time coming!  But I have a new novel, The Cupid Stone.  I cut my heart open and bled on the page for this one, and I’m so excited I can now say it’s out there on the query circuit.  Hopefully, it’ll catch a special person’s eye, and it’ll get the chance it deserves.

So I had actually started working on a different novel, The Sleeper Queen, when the idea for The Cupid Stone began to blaze its way through my brain.  Of course, I had to drop everything and start putting it down on paper (or else I probably would’ve lost it).  I’ve always wanted to do a story about Cupid—a very different Cupid—an evil Cupid.  I’ve also always wanted to do a story about time travel, so the story blossomed from there.  My love of Scotland (which will become apparent in Bound’s second installment, Origin) and South Carolina have also made an appearance in this one.  Stuart Lamont and Emberly Rhodes are two of the most complicated characters I’ve ever written.  Emberly is broken and unreliable, which makes her so real and believable.  She’s young and ridiculous and trying to find her way—and I love that about her.  Stuart is so much smarter than me and from a different time and culture.  He was very difficult to write, but I’m happy with the way he turned out.  Both of them, along with everyone else in the book, have a special place in my heart—right there with Cray and Riley and Len and Cece!

This novel means so much to me, and hopefully, one day, I’ll be able to share it with the world.  I’m still trying to traditionally publish.  For now, please enjoy the prologue, chapter one, and the ‘tones’ of The Cupid Stone.  The ‘tones’ are the musical artists who inspired me during the writing process.  Starset and Crywolf are frontrunners for this one.  If I had to label the tone of the novel through music, it would be with the songs, “Quantum Immortality” by Crywolf and “Starlight” by Starset.

Show me some love or leave a comment or both if you’d like.  Take care, dear readers.

Until next time…

E.

PS…To my early readers and ‘critiquers’…thank you so much!  The Cupid Stone would not be where it is without you!

PSS…When writing this novel, I learned what the word ‘anachronism’ means.  It’s cool!  Look it up!  (Thanks, Crywolf!)

It's Been Awhile

Welp, it's been awhile since my last post because I've been working hard on my new novel, Equinox. While I was working on Origin, the second book in The Bound Saga, I had an idea for another novel. I started thinking about it more and more until I could no longer hold it all in my head. It demanded I write it down, much to my dismay.  After all, my critique partners were demanding to know what happened next in Bound. They were hounding me to get Origin out to them...and they're still hounding me, btw!!! Once I started writing on the new novel, I couldn't stop, so I made the painful decision to place Origin on hold to work on my new idea. And thus, Equinox was born--a young adult science fiction novel.

 

In Bound, I feel as if there's a great amount of resiliency and restraint amongst my characters. For Equinox, I wanted to explore characters whom aren't so resilient or restrained. These two people are lost in different ways--opposites. This novel explores these two individuals and how both of them find in each other what was lost in themselves, strengthening each other in the end.

 

It's been so much fun to write and such a pleasure to allow Len and Cece into my head. I didn't think I could ever love two characters as much as I love Cray and Riley, but Len and Cece planted themselves deep within my heart. They mean so much to me, and their story means so much to me. I hope you, dear reader, enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

 

E.

Bound's Sounds

Since everyone loves music, I thought I'd share some of the songs that inspired my writing process.  For me, I can hear a song, and the scene I'm trying to set up will materialize in my mind, which is a great feeling and forever ties the song to the story.  The most influential band, by far, has been Chevelle.  I love them!  I have yet to find a Chevelle song that doesn't speak to me.  So, here's to Chevelle and all of the great bands that make life so much fun!  Relax and enjoy!

E.

One little seed...

My writing ideas, for the most part, start out as one small, but insistent thought--inspired by a word on a page, an image on the screen or out in the world, a conversation, a feeling evoked.  Then it plays over and over in my head until it's there, cemented.  I can't do anything but write it down and build it outward until it's all there--the setting, the characters, the dialogue, the emotion.

I tell people that I've always got a story in my head.  A friend once told me that I'm her hero.  I responded that I'm in fact not a hero but just some crazy person telling a story.  I'll often stay up at night, drive, sit and stare off into space, oblivious to all around, to think an idea through.  I've begun and abandoned many story lines.  But the story of Cray and Riley stuck with me.  I had to see it through.  And I really had to see it through after I read the first chapter I wrote, chapter two, to my sister.  She told me I couldn't stop.  So now, the Bound Saga will be my first completed story--in three easy installments, haha.  Well, I wouldn't call it easy.

It's been a long road, fraught with many ups and downs, just to get the first book, Bound, completed.  It all started over two years ago.  My husband was doing some renovations to our home, so our daughter and I moved in with my parents for a couple of months one summer.  My parents live out in the country--we're talking endless stretches of woods you can get lost in, long, desolate, winding, and dusty dirt roads, and lots of heat and bugs.  One afternoon I found my old high school yearbooks and started to reminisce about my angsty teenage years.  I started thinking about events in my life and how changing one element would have made my life turn out so differently.

Bound started out as a story of revenge.  Of course, it wasn't even called Bound, and it didn't have a fantasy element.  It was just a plain old story with regular teenagers.  I even went as far as to title it, The Heartbreak Pact.  But then I realized that, to me, reading a regular old story would be BORING to the nth degree.  I wanted it to be more because the story demanded to be more.

In thinking about how I could make the story more interesting, I played with the genie-in-a-well-instead-of-a-lamp idea and immediately thought it might be too weird.  I thought for about a month longer, and then in late September, I started writing.  I wrote Cray's character as a vampire at first.  Of course, that lasted for all of five minutes because I realized that YA is full of vampires and werewolves and witches and wizards and gods and mermaids and mind readers and ghosts.  I had to reinvent a timeless character.  On October 2, 2012, I started a Word document, making it official.  I decided to go back to the little weird idea of genie-in-a-well-instead-of-a-lamp.  But I didn't want just a genie; I wanted something darker and more mysterious.  And that's where I decided to nix the term "genie" and go with bloodbinder.  So here are some analogies for you (I thought this would be more fun, but I'm probably wrong because, according to most of my friends and family, I'm a dork!): 

1)  bloodbinder is to well as genie is to lamp

2)  bloodbinder is to rubbing the scars on his side to summon him as genie is to rubbing his lamp (eeewww that sounds dirty) to summon him

3)  bloodbinder is to binding his blood to your blood in order to grant you three wishes as genie is to granting you three wishes

4)  bloodbinder is to finder as genie is to master

And that's how one little seed idea gestated into the whole Bound Saga.  I know.  I know.  I ended abruptly up there.  But I had to stop there because telling you more would ruin what I have in store for you in book two, which is titled Origin at the moment.

This was fun.

TTFN,

E.

Me, out there...

Okay, so I'm prehistoric and old school when it comes to this blogging thing-a-ma-jig.  It's super new and feels really weird.  Yeah, I'm used to hearing myself talk--it's what I do for a living.  I'm an elementary teacher, and therefore, I'm the center of attention at some point each school day for one hundred eighty days of the year.  And I can handle that because I'm up in front of people (kids) who think I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread--I'm automatically cool, and I'm never ever picked last.  When I'm in front of my peers, it's a different story, which consists of shaky hands, fumbling over my words, an increased heart rate, and, of course, sweating.  I get nervous!  Sometimes I wake up and wonder, What in the H-E-DOUBLE HOCKEY STICK am I doing?  I'm letting people (ADULTS and some even KNOW me) inside my head--putting my heart out there to possibly be crushed.

I guess I'm just crazy like that.  Naw, I know why I've done all of this, and it's the way I feel about 87.33333% of the time.  I've done this because I wrote a beautiful story.  I believe in it.  Yeah, in generic and popular terms, Bound is a YA fantasy romance, but it's so much more to me because, what it all boils down to, no matter the genre, is its story.  It's a story that speaks to the heart--a story about two people who fall in love against all odds--a story about bravery and sacrifice.  Above all, it's a story that, at some level, is what many people can relate to, whose characters we fall in love with and root for.  It's epic and timeless because it is borne from the heart--my heart.  And I want to share it with the world.

E.